Back On The Horse

Coming to terms with my own self sabotage and writer's block

I should be sleeping right now, or cleaning the kitchen, or applying to jobs, or responding to onlyfans DMs and digging myself out of the financial hole I’ve found myself in. There is always a list of things I should be doing other than writing. I don’t know what it is but I’ve grown so afraid of my own words and what order I put them in or how many to put on a page. I’ve slowly but surely silenced myself over the past few years with every day or week or month that goes by and I shy away from the very thing I am best at. I’ve written no shortage of tweets or texts, or excuses to myself in my head, but I won’t let myself sit down and really create something.

I’ve put my 10,000 hours in, bargaining with myself about why I’m not writing and that I’ll definitely start again soon, and when I do how amazing it will be. I’m not sure what I’m scared of, am I scared of not being good enough? Or is it even scarier to me that I might actually be exactly good enough and one of my many other shortcomings will fuck it up? Is it easier to not even nurture a talent if I know deep down I don’t have what it takes to do anything with the opportunities it might bring? If I never get something in the first place, I can’t lose it. If I don’t try to make something, I can’t ruin it.

I think I’ve lived a lot of my life that way. Counting myself out before anyone else can do it for me. What’s most comfortable for me is operating from a place of lack, from a place of crisis. I am in my element when my life is falling apart and I knight-in-shining-armor rescue myself out of it in the nick of time, every time. When things are calm, when everything's in its place, then what’s my excuse for not reaching my potential? Once I’ve dug myself out of a hole, I don’t know what to do on solid ground. I don’t know how to start comfortably gardening. It’s so hard to plant seeds and tend to them when all ll I’ve known of holes is falling into them. 

It’s become part of my identity: my resilience. I am scrappy and I can handle any situation. Even if it’s of my own making, I am the champion that fought my way out. But what happens when there’s nothing to be resilient of? Who am I then? I guess I never let myself find out. As long as it’s always storming, my identity and the parts of me I take pride in remain true. Even if I have to make the rain myself. And the thing is, there is plenty of rain in life, I don’t need to be chasing tornados on top of it. But the damage a tornado does to you when you were the one chasing it somehow feels a lot safer than a rainstorm you weren’t expecting– where is this metaphor going? See? I’d be better at these if I wrote more. The point is, I haven’t let myself truly be out of control and vulnerable to true heartache or crushing disappointment in a long time. Then I’d have to know what true resilience is, and I am not brave enough for that.

Recently I found myself getting frustrated with a friend because when she didn’t immediately understand how to do something, she would just give up or make the task more complicated for herself, rather than sit with the discomfort of not understanding it and taking the time to try. And I found myself actually getting upset with her about it. As if somehow when she did this to herself, it was hurting me. And I realized that watching her put herself through that was hurting me, because I couldn’t sit with the discomfort of how familiar her pattern was to me. When watching her decide that parallel parking is simply impossible, despite empirical evidence that it is completely doable, even by people half as smart as she is, and choosing to instead circle blocks at a time for any other kind of parking spot, I was watching myself circle the block of my own life. Too scared to back into any spot that’s just right for me, because what if I don’t do it perfectly?

When I was learning to ride horses as a kid (no, I wasn’t a horse-girl– I was horse-girl-adjacent, thank you very much), I remember once the instructor told me to look in the direction I want the horse to go. If I am steering the horse right, but my eyes are looking to the left, the horse will end up veering left, inevitably. There are subtleties to our body language that we aren’t even aware of, and we will end up wherever it is we are looking. Recently I’ve realized that in my life, I’ve been looking at everything I hope doesn’t happen. My eyes are set on what I’m afraid of, where I desperately hope I don’t go, and not where I wish to be headed. And my proverbial horse has taken me over and over again right to where I was looking. 

So yes, I’m afraid of where I want to go. That’s okay. I can’t wait until I’m not afraid anymore to get on my horse and go.